


Neutral Element

by brawltogethernow



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: (Ships What? Everything), Adventure, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canon-Typical Violence, Dammit Klaus, F/F, For Science!, Full-Body Prosthetic, Gen, Gil Plans™, Humor, In Spite of a Nail, Literally Tackling Your Problems, Medical Drama-Prone Sturmvorauses, Nice Science Wanna Shoes?, Politics, Romance, That’s Pretty Gay, The Rating Is For Violence Not Steaminess Sorry, Theater Folk, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Zeetha Ships It, cute date ideas: nighttime specimen dissection, extra neuroses courtesy of the sturmvarious clan, robot tarvek the overdramatic laptop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2018-12-14 06:22:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11777286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brawltogethernow/pseuds/brawltogethernow
Summary: Klaus takes his son to Europa and leaves his daughter in Skifander. Aaronev sacrifices his daughter to Lucrezia's machine. Agatha is still the hero of the story.(Genderswap of only Gil, Zeetha, Tarvek, and Anevka.)





	1. The Woman in the Wastes

**Author's Note:**

> The novelizations capitalize most common nouns invented/repurposed for the story, but I'm not using them as a style guide for this one. For now. I may panic and backtrack on this decision at some point.

_Previously in her adventures, Agatha was kidnapped by the baron who rules over the continent of Europe, befriended the baron’s son, a boisterous green-haired swordsman, discovered she was the lost heir to a family of infamous mad scientists, and then escaped with said son (and a talking cat) into the wastelands that dominate most of the continent. Agatha and her companions are now undercover in a traveling circus. Why is it, esteemed reader, that I feel like you knew most of this already?_

 

Agatha finds Gil when she’s _actually_ looking for dead clanks.

Agatha is picking through a patch of scrub in the Wastelands, following enthusiastic but unspecific directions from Bal toward some debris that sounded like she might find it useful. Zag, who took to performance life like a fanged duck to rapids, has stayed behind to chat with Yeti. It’s a ways off, but Agatha’s been in this general area before since the Circus picked its current camp, and she’s armed.

When she gets to what should be the right clearing she casts her eyes around, looking for the “big green claw thing” Balthazar described to her. If it has hydraulic parts, she can definitely use them for the calliope.

Success seems to be on the horizon when her eye catches a glint of metal, then very plainly _isn’t_ when the glint shifts much faster than she’s walking — and then an enormous clank is charging toward her.

The thing is silver, with an overall effect like a massive polished teapot mated with a flat crab, shiny surface clustered with lights like compound eyes. It’s half-lame, its legs on the left side severed by something and showering sparks. The only one still attached is hanging uselessly, dragging a line in the dirt. It seems to be doing well enough with the six on the right side, however. It’s canted its body to put most of its weight on them, compensating by using a long cannon barrel that’s attached to its front like a crutch.

 _Its gyroscopes must really be something,_ thinks Agatha as she hastens to get her death ray off her hip.

She gets it detangled and aimed at the clank — she is _so_ going to design a better holster as soon as she gets back — _just_ as the clank bears down on her —

— And then there’s a _thunk_ , and the machine is jerked to the left as someone _jumps_ on it. “Sorry!” says the someone. The clank spins around, trying to shake the object stuck to its back. “I’ll get it under control in a minute!” It spins again. “I didn’t think there would be anybody out here!”

The clank bucks, finally tossing its impromptu rider. Agatha gets an impression of blue clothes and brown hair from the blur that goes flying past her, which hits the dirt and then skids several feet before stopping.

Agatha looks down into the shallow ditch that’s now been added to the clearing. “Oh, yeah, I can see you’ve really got this,” she says sarcastically, leaning over and looking the stranger up and down appraisingly in case it’s someone she needs to shoot.

It’s a woman. She’s wearing a berry-blue shirt with a messy, half-upturned collar decorated with flat dummy bulbs open over an undershirt, and some sort of harness affair over all of that. She’s in trousers that are probably cream under the dirt, and boots, and that’s about all Agatha can take in before the stranger lunges to her feet.

The motion is fluid and begins barely a beat after she hits the ground with an abruptness that sends Agatha skipping out of the way. Her purposeful march away from Agatha — _without so much as a by-your-leave_ — reveals that the harness thing holds two sheathed swords crossed over each other on her back, which she draws as she stalks back toward the clank. To attack it. With some swords.

It’s always a little sad watching people march to completely avoidable deaths.

As Agatha watches, the woman darts in and aims a slash at the remaining legs, missing when the machine retreats but leaving a shallow rent in the metal along its side. Huh. Maybe _she_ took its legs off.

A tuft of the woman’s hair trails after her when she roles away from the clank’s rebutting strike, which leaves a pit in the dirt it takes the clank a minute to wiggle free of. She’s wearing it tied in a waist-length tail at the nape of her neck, and the tie together with the headband she’s wearing are doing exactly nothing to keep it out of her face or apparently control it in any way. The tail is tied in two more places along the length. To keep it from going absolutely mad the way the shorter hair that falls around her face does, possibly. Agatha checks her gun and considers the possibility that if she shoots the clank it will explode.

The woman does a back handspring, and Agatha stomps a circle around the clearing, looking for a good spot.

The woman fully severs the clank’s dragging leg, but then has to disengage again when it remembers it has a cannon.

Agatha shoots a tree near the base of its trunk, which tips over and lands on the clank. It stills.

The woman regards this, eyebrows raised.

“…I had that,” she says.

Agatha stomps to the center of the clearing.

The woman hesitantly leans over the still clank to look at it appraisingly. “Oh, hey!” she says, drawing herself back up. “That was pretty —”

Agatha rounds on her, jabbing a finger into her face. “Is this — YOUR — machine?!”

The Wasteland woman jerks back, startled and defensive. A disc of warm metal patterned like a face sits on a band resting high on her forehead where it’s mostly hidden by her hair, and its eyes go round when hers do. (How does _that_ work?) “What? No! No, no! I was just — I was just hunting rogue clanks, and I found this one. You know, for parts?”

Agatha stares at her suspiciously. Lilith was very specific in her warnings about people met in situations like this. “If you want parts, why get them from live machines when there are neutralized ones everywhere?”

The woman puts her hand on the back of her head, looking off to the side. “It’s more fun this way? And, you know, it makes the Wastelands safer?” She lowers her hand, looks at it, then holds it out to Agatha. “Sorry, look, I guess I didn’t give you a very good first impression. I’m Gil.”

Agatha looks at the hand skeptically, then takes it. “Agatha.” She’s beyond used to women in pants at this point, but is still more used to curtsying than handshakes, and her shake is unnatural with inexperience. “Are you saying you were seriously —?”

They’re interrupted when the clank gets up and lunges for them clumsily. They swivel their heads in its direction at the same time, then spring apart.

The clank totters when it expends its lunge without striking anything, the tree finally sliding off its back.

“You were chasing this thing for fun?!” screeches Agatha, shooting at it. It curls up into a ball and rolls like a homicidal cart wheel.

“Maybe?!” the woman shouts back, diving away from the path of its curve of destruction and turning the motion into a flip onto the clank’s head. “I feel like I’m giving you an unfair impression of myself here!”

Agatha’s gun spits out a shower of sparks, and her hands jerk away reflexively. It clatters to the dirt. The clank, wobbling, aims its crutch-cannon at her. The upset sends Gil sliding clean off of the clank’s slippery exterior with a yelp, and Agatha abandons her weapon on the ground in her effort to get out of the way.

The cannon fires on her twice and misses, then swivels away from her.

It swings down and pointedly crushes her death ray. Not good.

Agatha ducks for cover behind a short bush. “Hold on!” she shouts over her shoulder to her new acquaintance, who’s levering herself off the ground looking more winded and less acrobatic than previously. “I can help if you buy me _time!_ ” She starts digging into her pockets, pulling out a screwdriver and parts. “Distract it!”

“Okay, I’m pretty sure that you should be distracting it while _I_ build things,” mutters Gil, back on her feet but swaying slightly. “But alright, why not.”

She runs a few yards and then turns to the clank, which is trying to shake parts off its cannon’s mouth without falling over. “Hey!” she shouts at it, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Squashing me won’t give you your leeegs back!” she singsongs obnoxiously. “But maybe it will make you feel better?”

Eye lights darkening to red, the clank rolls again and aims itself toward her.

“Ha!” Gil shouts as she jumps clean over it, and it plows past where she was standing and into another tree. “Missed me! — Whoa!” The clank rolls back from the tree dizzily and rams itself twice into the tree that _Gil_ landed in when she jumped, which knocks her out of it. As she flips to her feet it levers itself upright again and moves to corner her against the base.

“ _Umm,_ ” says Gil, as the clank bears its cannon down on her. She looks like she wants to dart her eyes to her impromptu ally but doesn’t dare take them off the clank.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got something!” shouts Agatha, pulling back her arm to throw. “Stand back!”

Gil somersaults out of the way as Agatha lobs the dingbot she’s tinkered with at the silver clank. The little machine lands in the shadow of its body, rolls a jaundiced, sleepy eye up to look at the comparative behemoth it’s found itself under, and then explodes.

But instead of concussive heat, there’s a wave of sound.

With the small amount of debris comes a whistle so loud and high that it’s more like a physical presence than something for the ears. As it passes through the clank, all the lights affixed to it go out.

The sound ends. The last bits and bobs of dingbot clatter to the ground, vibrating like dropped change. The silver clank follows suit, folding in on its remaining legs.

Gil’s eyes are wide. A gear falls out of her hair.

Agatha brushes dust off her skirt. “There,” she says. “It should _really_ be dead this time. Even so, we might as well double-check —”

The other woman bounds over to her. “You’re a _spark!_ ” She says, grinning with her whole face.

“ _Yes,_ ” says Agatha, still defensive of the title. “What’s it to you?”

The woman beams at her. “I’ve met other women with the spark since I came here, but none who could do _that!_ ” She leans over to look at the remains of Agatha’s death ray. “Did you build this, too?”

Flushing partly at her rude reaction and partly at the woman’s attention, Agatha is about to say yes, she did — when something that feels like a bundle of wriggly cloth lands on her head.

A large orange lobster claw descends into her vision. She shrieks.

“Sorreeemiz, culdyu helpmedoun pleez?” it whurbles out, followed by a string of syllables in an equally distorted version of a language Agatha doesn’t recognize.

“Wait, it’s okay, sorry!” shouts Gil, hands waving in frantic placation. “That’s just my friend, Zoing.” She scoops it down, revealing that it’s…a small ensemble of tiny blue greatcoat, a full-sized pair of teal suede shoes, and a robin’s egg blue felt gallon hat, with two bright orange claws and a pair of tangerine antennae sticking out of it. Other than that, all that’s visible under the hat is a single huge eye.

“S’nek zur _takkan_ mi ken?” Gil asks it after she’s deposited it on the ground, facing it with her hands on her hips.

“Scayping.”

“Well, that’s fair, I suppose.”

Agatha pats her hair, still feeling slightly off-balance. A giant lobster fell on her head. It’s not the most auspicious end to a first meeting.

Gil doesn’t seem to care though, concluding a brief but animated discussion in a blend of Romanian and a less unintelligible version of the little construct’s language and turning back to Agatha. It’s clear she’s rather taller than Agatha is now that she’s standing up, still, and on the ground. “So,” she says. “It’s Agatha?”

“Uh, yes.” She forgot to introduce herself as Olga; that’s what you get for losing your head just because you’ve been fighting a giant killer clank. At least she’s in the middle of nowhere with someone who seems unlikely to be either willing or able to rat her out. “Agatha Clay.”

Gil beams at her again, brown eyes warm when the sun hits them, like expensive spirits in a glass. “That was really amazing, Miss Clay.”

The sun is very warm on Agatha’s face suddenly.

“You shut it right down!” Gil continues, highly animated. “ It was great! You’ve _got_ to show me what you did!” The construct squints its single visible eye up at Agatha with interest.

Agatha fidgets, playing with her hair, her face still warm. “Ah, it was really nothing. It actually used to be that I couldn’t make them _stop_ doing that….” She turns around , unsure what to do with this attention, and spots a large green clawlike shape sticking out of the dirt. “Typical,” she says. “Here, could you help me dismantle this?”

 

In the end, they get a ton of worthwhile parts to split between them from the black-eyed silver clank and the disembodied green pincer, which seems like it was part of some sort of digging machine and still has really nice joints. They take a moment to admire the clank’s gyroscope, then determine it’s too big for either of them to salvage.

“I move around too much,” Gil concludes sadly. “I think I could work the general principles into a project of mine, though, if I could make it smaller….” she says, leaning around to try to see it from the bottom.

“What kind of project?” asks Agatha, curious.

“Oh!” says the other woman. “I could show you, if you like.” She laces her hands together in front of her and looks away from Agatha. “I was going to ask if we could escort you back anyway.”

“We —?” Zoing waves its feelers at her. “ _Ah._ ”

Gil spreads her hands placatingly. “It’s just, since your gun is out of commission.”

Agatha eyes their pile of spoils appraisingly. “I could probably build a new one. But alright.”

 

While they’re collecting what they’ve cannibalized, a little clank clambers out of Agatha’s pack to poke interestedly at parts, and Gil snags it to get a closer look. She gets in about forty seconds of examination before it gets fed up and whacks her in the thumb and she lets it go free, scowling at it. “Those explode, right?” she says, shaking out her hand as it scurries away in a tiny mechanical huff.

Agatha scoops it up and holds it by the chain ring, in case it decides to take revenge. “Yes,” she says, a little surprised Gil noticed that from only examining the outside of the casing. “It’s an emergency feature.”

“So,” says Gil, “what I’m really wondering is — Don’t get me wrong, that wave of sound was brilliant! But — why didn’t you just destroy the clank?”

Agatha blinks at her. “I thought you wanted the parts?”

Gil looks at her.

Agatha shifts uncomfortably. “What?!”

Gil coughs into her hand. “Uh — nothing?” Agatha catches her exchanging a look with her construct.

 

They set a course with Agatha’s compass and start the walk back. Agatha, having grown up in a smithy, is no slouch when it comes to hauling heavy parts, but she would hesitate to go as far as Gil is and do balancing tricks with them while she walks.

While the woman is thus occupied — although it doesn’t seem to take up very much of her attention — Agatha sneaks a peek at Gil’s companion. The lobster construct is almost entirely concealed in its tiny blue greatcoat. Noticing her regard, it clicks its pincers happily at her. She jumps and frees a hand to wave back awkwardly.

Growing up, Agatha was very strictly indoctrinated by Lilith in certain basic courtesies, and they’re something to fall back on in more preposterous situations. “So,” she says. “You said your name was Gil?”

“Yep!” the woman says, knocking her pile of parts up into the air with an elbow and then catching them so they land in a neat pile in her arms . “Zengil, Daughter of Chump. Don’t know how accurate the name is, I’ve never met him. Princess-Guardian of Skifander.” She pauses. “Which is —”

“The Warrior Queen’s Hidden Jewel!” says Agatha, clapping her hands together in delight. “Of course! Wow, that brings me back. I — What? You’re staring at me.” That’s an understatement: Agatha isn’t sure she’s ever seen someone who looked so much like the textbook definition of “flabbergasted” before.

Gil stares a moment longer before she pulls herself together. “I — I’ve never met anyone else who’s _heard_ of it before.”

“Oh,” says Agatha, surprised. “Really? My uncle used to tell me stories about it, when I was very small.”

“…I don’t suppose you know where it _is_ do you?” Gil asks tentatively, tilting her shoulders along an axis so that her posture bends at the top towards Agatha.

“Um,” says Agatha, wondering how lost you have to be to lose your own lost city. “Definitely not.”

“Oh,” says Gil, shoulders dropping. “Well, it was worth a shot. You’re still the closest I’ve ever gotten, though. Let me guess — your uncle is dead or missing.”

“Um,” says Agatha. “Yes?”

“Yeah, I figured,” says Gil, then seems to realize how she sounds. “I mean! I’m sorry?” She looks at Agatha desperately. “Uh, which —? Not that you have to tell me! It’s not any of my business! I just —”

“Missing,” says Agatha. “For, uh, awhile, so uh. I mean it’s not _fine_ , exactly, I’m not _happy_ about it, but —”

“Sorry,” says Gil, looking mortified.

They walk in a brief awkward silence.

“So…” says Gil, spinning a piece of machinery on the tip of one finger and looking anywhere but at Agatha. “Heterodyne?”

Agatha chokes. “Wh-what?”

Gil blinks at her, then points. “The trilobite badge on your gun? You like the stories, right?”

“Oh — oh! Yes! I do!” says Agatha, her heart easing back from its game showing of tachycardia. “I, uh —” She relaxes slightly. “My favorite is _Race to the West Pole_ , actually.” Although really thinking about the books is weird now for obvious reasons, that’s not quite enough to destroy of a lifetime of enjoyment.

For a moment, Gil looks at her oddly, but then her expression clears and she says, “That’s a great one. Especially the scene with the brass —”

“Armadillo trap!” Agatha grins at her. “For brass armadillos! That’s the most clever scene for three installments in either direction. You like Heterodyne stories?”

“They’re my favorite thing about Europa, they’re great,” Gil says with relish.

It’s a unique interest for someone who isn’t even Europan. “I’m actually traveling with a troupe of performers that puts on the shows right now.”

Gil’s eyes light up. “ _Really?_ ” She quirks a smile at Agatha. “Think I can catch a show?”

“Maybe, if your device is good,” says Agatha, smirking playfully.

Maybe it’s not so bad that she messed up and didn’t give her fake name, thinks Agatha. This way, if she brings Gil by the Circus, they won’t have to lie to her.

…Of course, they live and breathe lying and might start doing it automatically, so that might be even worse.

The discussion on the merits of various canons and ghostwriters and the structure of the ideal Heterodyne story carries them the rest of the way back. Which isn’t saying that much, because it turns out Agatha was practically on top of Gil’s camp. Which makes Agatha feel a little bad for considering shooting her into a greasy smear multiple times.

Gil’s camp is…

“Ooh,” says Agatha.

It’s not so much a camp as like Agatha’s new acquaintance has set up a whimsical treehouse in the middle of a rocky clearing. There’s a medium-sized boulder with a tea set set up on it, which Zoing immediately makes a beeline for, shrilling, “Mekka ti for the prettigurl!” There’s a _doily_ under it. (Half of it appears to have been burned by something, but Agatha respects the effort.) A wooden crate with ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ʀᴇᴍᴏᴠᴇ ғʀᴏᴍ ʙᴇʟᴜšᴀ ʀᴀɪʟᴡᴀʏ sᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ stamped on the side sits a bit off from it, being used as a table for mechanical projects in various states of completion. The whole area is strewn with the same, sunbursts of science broken up by broad empty areas. There are strings of tiny lights hung up in a few places for apparently no reason. Slightly off-center is a boxy walker not entirely dissimilar to the wagons the Circus lives out of, if they were stripped of gingerbread trim and paint.

And in front of it is Gil’s project. Parts are strewn around it, clearly from recent radical refurbishing.

“It’s a vehicle?” asks Agatha, leaning over it to see better. “Why does it have bits?”

“They’re wings,” says Gil. “It flies.”

“Oooh,” says Agatha.

“…Theoretically,” Gil adds.

“Oh,” says Agatha.

Gil turns slightly red at her obvious disappointment and returning skepticism. She waves at the machine. “ _This_ model is theoretical! This model! I _have_ gotten some of them off the ground!”

“Uh-huh,” says Agatha, politely interested.

The hand waving grows defensive. “I was thinking about this general principle at home, but I hadn’t really started any practical work on it yet, and now I don’t have as many resources and developing a model that doesn’t need to start from a height is — oh, forget it.” She buckles to Agatha’s raised eyebrows with a sigh. “But _anyway,_ I _figure_ ,” she continues. “That if I want to be able to get home, this general principle is my best bet.”

Agatha winces. “Oh.”

Gil picks up a loose bolt and fiddles with it. “I’m still working out the bugs, but it already covers a lot of ground!” she says, recovering some enthusiasm.

“Is that what you’re trying to do?” asks Agatha. “Get home? Sorry, I mean, of course you are. I-I’m sorry that I couldn’t help more —”

“Eh,” says Gil. “I’m _not_ , really.” She shrugs her shoulders, tossing the bolt into the passenger seat of the machine. “I _would_ , you know, like to know where home _is,_ relative to here. I mean, I should be _able_ to go back. …If I need to.”

“Um,” says Agatha, thinking about the trip she’s making now to a town she only knows by its gingerbread trilobites. “Yes,” she says, “I can only imagine. Well, ah, I’m still sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

“It’s really fine,” Gil insists, shrugging with a careless gesture.

Agatha waves her hands at the device. “But you built all this…”

Gil rubs the back of her neck. “I really like heavier-than-air flight? I suppose that’s not very —”

“I _see,_ ” says Agatha, voice crackling. “You’re doing it _for science!_ ”

Gil blinks twice, arm dropping. “I — uh — Well, yeah!”

“How _noble!_ ” says Agatha, grabbing her by the upper arms.

Gil grins down at her. So does her headband.

“How does that _work?_ ” asks Agatha, caught up enough to reach into her new acquaintance’s personal space to tap it. Gil blinks again. You’d think she’d be harder to startle after all this time out in the wastelands, honestly.

But she recovers quickly and grins again, this time fiercer. “I’ve been waiting to meet someone with the right background knowledge to understand that for _ages,_ ” she says. “Let me tell you _all about it._ ”

 

Gil does walk Agatha through the principles of some of her people’s ceremonial sparkwork ( _fascinating_ ), which turns into a tour of her surprisingly involved camp. Gil appears to be spending her time cobbling together Skifandrian and Europan principles with wild abandon using parts collected from the Wastelands, with…mixed results.

The little construct presses tea in overfilled dainty teacups on them with cheery squeaks after a considerable delay that Agatha attributes to its lack of defined digits. They take the tea — Gil cheerfully, Agatha only slightly gingerly — and end up continuing their discussion of mechanical theory seated on each side of the rock with the doily on it.

It’s quite intellectually stimulating, as well as a great deal less _eventful_ than recent similar events, such as her tea with the Jäger Generals. Or the time Zag offered her coffee on Castle Wulfenbach immediately after making a suggestive comment about her and she threw it in his face.

Talk about inauspicious introductions.

“So…” says Agatha, eventually. She shifts her weight and wobbles slightly on the apple box she’s sitting on. “You live out here?”

The other woman stares at her. “…I do not live in the Wastelands. Do I look like I live in the Wastelands?”

“Um,” says Agatha.

“Oh, _no,_ ” says Gil, resting her forehead in one hand. “I do, don’t I? I look like I live in the Wastelands. I _don’t_ live in the Wastelands.”

“No, no!” Agatha insists, waving her hands back and forth defensively. “I mean…”

Gil stares down at her.

“…You kind of look like you live in the Wastelands,” admits Agatha.

“I’m just CAMPING!” exclaims Gil. “ _Traveling!_ ”

“Of _course_ you are,” says Agatha, in the humoring tone she cultivated for assisting professors.

“I _am!_ ” says Gil, waving her arms agitatedly. “I’m just passing through on my way between cities. I promise I don’t live in the Wastelands. I’m traveling _through_ the Wastelands.”

“…Is there a significant difference?” asks Agatha, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

“Yes!” exclaims Gil, indignant.

“Hmm,” hums Agatha.

“ _Normally,_ I stay in populated areas,” Gil plunges on doggedly, clearly ready to dig this point into the ground. “…It’s just there’s an awful lot of emptiness between those on this continent.”

“Oh, is it not like that where you’re from?” asks Agatha, curious. “It’s so odd to remember that the Wastelands are mostly Europe-centric.”

“I mean, we have the Dark Lands,” says Gil. “But those are pretty different.”

Agatha looks over the camp/lab with a critical eye. “So it just _seems like_ you live in the Wastelands.”

“ _I do not live in the Wastelands._ ”

Agatha makes a dubious face.

Gil sighs expansively. “I was traveling by air,” she begins.

“In —?” Agatha points to the flying machine project.

“No, in a dirigible. But then my transportation got taken out. By, uh, a pirate.”

“By a _pirate?_ ”

“Well, she’s a legal pirate nowadays,” says Gil. She adds in a mutter, “Which isn’t helping me _avoid_ her….”

“A privateer…” says Agatha “…destroyed your dirigible.”

“Mm,” hums Gil in absent agreement. She scoops up a wrench from the scattering of tools on the ground around the flyer and points to her cabin with it. “See, that’s where I got these struts.”

Now that Agatha looks, a lot of the material looks rather odd for a walking clank.

“Anyway, she was _trying_ to kill me,” says Gil. “So I got off pretty lightly, if you really think about it!”

“Oh, but —” begins Agatha.

“And I had to land it —” says Gil, brushing onwards, “— Well, crash it, okay, and, I mean, I’d only had the one airship.”

They both look down at her experimental machine. Unconnected parts are spilling from a work panel open on one of its sides.

Gil looks around at her camp again.

“Arxa's teeth,” she says, deflating. “I kind of do live in the Wastelands.”

Agatha snorts, making a delayed attempt to cover her lower face with her hands.

“Oh, shut up,” Gil says morosely.

“So which city are you heading for?” asks Agatha, forcing herself to remain polite and _not_ snicker at her new acquaintance.

Gil twists her head rapidly back and forth to look around the general area in slight desperation. “I’m…sort of winging it right now?”

“The people I’m traveling with are taking a fairly direct route through the next few large towns east,” says Agatha. “I think I could copy some route maps for you. You could follow along, maybe.”

And she could bring her lab, maybe. And show Agatha more of her work, maybe. Agatha has been around plenty of strong sparks’ projects…but that was _before_ losing her locket.

And brief proximity to Baron Wulfenbach’s, which barely counts.

“Oh!” says Gil, brightening. “That _would_ be helpful! Thank you, Miss Clay!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The color might give the impression that Gil's outfit is a version of Zeetha's from canon, but it's actually based on [Gil's outfit in](http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20030616) "The Infamous Falling Machine!"
> 
> Zoing’s colors are inverted because it stretched my suspension of disbelief too much that Gil could make the same construct in Skifander as on Castle Wulfenbach. But Zoing’s personality is exactly the same because ~~I say so~~ of mad science.
> 
> S’nek zur _takkan_ mi ken? - What were you _doing_ up there?


	2. Cute Date Ideas: Dissect a Corpse!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starts a breath after this world's version of "Agatha's Bad Plan".

Agatha gets back into the blue blouse-and-peasant skirt ensemble she was wearing that day (on loan from Pix) and packs a scant bag of supplies. She pats Krosp on the head and picks her way down from her wagon the first time the caravan collectively slows to turn a bend. She paces a short distance into the dark from the procession of vehicles, animals, and people, then puts her bag on the ground and kneels down to double check whether she has everything she may need.

“Sneaking out?” says Zag. He’s done that creepy thing where he sneaks up on her again, and Agatha, who tells herself she should be used to it by now, tries not to jump.

“I’m not going into Passholdt,” says Agatha. “…Probably,” she adds to be fair.

Zag stares at her consideringly, and she waits for him to admonish her. “You need backup?” he says instead.

Agatha smiles. This, this is why she let him come with her. “No. I mean, I think I’ll have some. And I know where the trouble is, so I think I should know how to avoid it.”

“You’ll _have_ backup?” says Zag, looking at her expectantly.

Agatha responds with a rigid sheepish grin.

“…Uh huh,” says Zag finally, eyebrows quirking. “The wagons are going to pick up the pace again soon. How are you going to catch up?”

“I’ll handle that. I was looking at the maps Abner was planning with earlier, so I know the route.”

“That doesn’t really tackle the important part of the question.”

“Handled! Honest!”

“Your heroic escapades aren’t going to get you out of your morning run.”

Agatha groans.

Zag beams at her sadistically.

She stands up and picks her bag up to leave, and pauses, fidgeting. “I met someone who’s good at biology,” she says. “She's been following the same route as us. I’m — I'm just going to ask her for a second opinion.”

Zag furrows his forehead at her. “A spark? You met a spark in the Wastelands?”

Agatha waves her arms at the sleeping circus trundling by a few yards from them. “We met all _these_ sparks in the Wastelands.”

Zag’s expression is still dubious for some reason. “Yeah, but…that’s not…” He breaks off, eyeing her and doing more things with his eyebrows.

“What?” she asks. “Why does everyone always stare at me!”

Zag rolls his eyes and sighs. “Oh, you,” he says, reaching out and ruffling her hair fondly.

“ _What?_ ” demands Agatha. “Agh! Zagreus!”

He draws back his hand before she can catch it and enact revenge, grinning. “Well, don’t get yourself killed! I’ve put too much work into you, and we haven’t even _started_ on swords yet.”

“Oh, god,” says Agatha.

 

Gil is more amenable than she expected. She helps her find one of the things, and then she helps her take it apart.

 

To Agatha’s surprise, Gil’s reaction to her visiting her camp in the middle of the night was not confusion or hostility, but to beam at her and go, “Oh, _Agatha!_ ” She looked so pleased, and Agatha’s heart warmed momentarily.

It takes them about an hour to trek to the bridge, collect the most intact corpse, and drag it enough of a distance away from the area to dispel both of their heebie-jeebies. They splay it out on a big, reasonably flat rock. The rock is reasonably flat because something sliced the top off of it: It’s lying upright about twenty meters away. They triple check the specimen for the vital signs of the living and the unquiet dead, and then make a Y-incision.

 

It turns out that being allowed to get involved in dissection is _disgusting._ Agatha’s face feels like it’s acquired a permanently pursed expression. Gil wasn’t talking herself up: She’s examining the creature like an expert, not even blinking at the…mess. “Bone structure and musculature have both been radically altered,” she says, peering through a huge set of goggles. “But I think you’re right — this is baseline _human._ ”

Agatha swallows her distaste and leans over it. “But are they people who have been altered, or just based on the template?”

Gil taps its hand against her (gloved) palm. “These weren’t grown in a vat; too inefficient.” She rotates a partly stripped joint. “And the wear on the bones is wrong. And I doubt they were imported — the alteration looks too recent, for one thing. And if they’d traveled here, they’d have left a swathe of destruction along the landscape. It’s not pretty, but — I’d say these are the townspeople.

Agatha exhales through her teeth. “So there’s nothing left to save.”

“Even if what did this didn’t get every citizen, Agatha…” Gil gestures at it. “Do you think you could survive camped out in a town swarming with these?”

“…No.”

Neither of them posits whether they could _take on_ a town swarming with these. But Agatha feels better, knowing that Gil also wants to. She’s not that strange, not irrational to want to help.

“…Maybe some of them escaped,” she says.

“Maybe,” says Gil.

They stand there for a moment.

Gil cracks her shoulders. “Well, might as well finish examining this. If we figure more things out, maybe we could trace the source, or prepare the Baron’s people a little more.”

They dig in, and have barely started when they turn up the first oddity.

“What _is_ this?” says Gil, extricating an object from the creature’s chest cavity.

The spiky shape is mostly decalcified shell, but is unmistakably the remains of a foreign biological structure. Whatever was inside the exoskeleton is mostly disintegrated, and it hangs floppy from her forceps.

Agatha pales, her eyes widening. “Oh my god, I think it’s a Wasp. They _are_ revenants!”

“Rev —” Gil fumbles the tongs, horrified. “This is one of those things that turns people into mindless monsters? But — I didn’t think those did anything like _this!_ ” She gestures at the figure on the rock, its pulpy skin and twisted body.

“It must be some kind of new strain,” says Agatha, taking the forceps from her gingerly. “Master Payne was _right._ We _have_ to report this. The Baron —” She shudders. “He isn’t very nice, but I know he doesn’t like Other tech.”

Gil bends back over the unnaturally lanky corpse and begins digging around, making little dissatisfied noises.

Agatha waves her hands around. “To develop something like this, you would definitely need access to the original versions of the slavers! Which means someone has a hive engine! Maybe even another new one! There was a new one on — in Beetleburg.”

(Wrist-deep in organ meat, Gil flashes a quick look at her and hums consideringly.)

Agatha waves her hands around, the urge to rant more anxious than mad. “It could mean anything!” she says. “It could be the start of another war! And I —”

Gil puts a hand on her wrist. To avoid touching anything that isn’t gloved with her gummy hands, Agatha realizes. “If this is something like _that,_ breaking down how they work is even _more_ important.”

Agatha makes a displeased but assenting sound, and leans in to help her strip it down.

After — long enough to give her a neck crick — Agatha pulls back and strips off her gloves. It’s gotten cooler as the night wears on, and the slick fluids on them are catching the cold. More importantly, she wants the better handheld light she brought from her pack, and she is _not_ getting monster goo on it.

Gil has picked apart one of its eyeballs (yeuch) and is examining all the little parts, which doesn’t seem very precise, but then they _are_ in the middle of a scrubby field. “Looks like they have improved night vision, but that makes them light-sensitive _and_ decreases their vision overall. You said they rampaged when you shot at them? Was there a bright light?”

“Well, yes,” says Agatha, rummaging. She looks up. “But also a loud sound and, you know, it’s a _death ray_. It’s for zapping and burning things.”

Gil is staring at the skull. “I think they must navigate mostly by _scent_. You see this structuring here?”

Wait a second. “By scent?” says Agatha, having a hint of an inkling.

“Yeah, looks like,” says Gil, jabbing at something deformed and membranous. “Not really very efficient, but it’s effective enough.”

“Wait, says Agatha, “so —”

There’s a crack in the bushes behind them, and then they’re jumped by five Passholdt monsters.

 

“SO IF THEORETICALLY WE DRAGGED ONE ACROSS THE COUNTRYSIDE, THEY COULD FOLLOW THE TRAIL THEN?!” shouts Agatha as they haul tail away from their rabid entourage.

“THAT SEEMS LIKE A SOLID HYPOTHESIS, YES,” shouts Gil, slicing at them with both arms as she tries to slash and run backwards at the same time.

 

Agatha, as Zag so kindly reminded her, isn’t up to swords. They fall into a pattern: Gil keeps the monsters off of Agatha, and Agatha comes up with a plan to take them out and executes it. The amount of faith the other woman has in her strikes Agatha as faintly ridiculous, but there isn’t really time to argue.

Though the flailing of their gangling limbs and their tendency to crawl over each other makes them look like a bit of a mob, there are only about twenty mutated revenants on their tail. In the end, Agatha crushes them, all at once.

With a piece of a cliff.

She got the idea from their impromptu lab table.

She tugs Gil out of the way with a full-body hug. They both go stumbling, there’s a ground-shaking boom, and then they’re both left, clutching at each other, standing in a silent expanse next to a new hillock. There’s a beat of silence. Their grips loosen.

“Woo!” whoops Agatha. “That was GREAT!” She grabs Gil by the leather straps and plants a kiss on her mouth, then spins around. “Did you see us?! We blew up a mountain! I blew up a mountain!”

“…What?” says Gil faintly.

The night air is chilly, but Agatha feels warm enough to power Mr. Tock. “And I didn’t even ruin my dress this time! Ha! Take that, insidious pattern of destruction!” …It’s still kind of the worse for wear from the explosion that evening, but there’s no _new_ damage, anyway.

“You did, you did blow up a mountain,” says Gil, responses slightly delayed.

“Wow! Wow,” says Agatha, blood still singing with it. “We should do that more often!”

“…W-we should?” says Gil, who also seems flushed, and no wonder, what an adventure, ha!

“Definitely,” says Agatha.

“Guh,” says Gil.

 

“…So! Can your flying machine outpace land-based travel?”

 

Agatha spends most of the morning konked out in her wagon, for some reason.

“Geez, Z, maybe you should go a little easier on her,” says Lars.

Zag snorts, staring at his student judgingly.

“…If she’s been here, who was driving Baba Yaga earlier?”

“I think she might have made it drive itself now.”

“…Wow.”

Zag smirks at him. “ _Oh,_ yeah.”

“No! Not like — ! …I, uh, have to go. Perimeter to scout. Y-you know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agatha, you broke the princess.
> 
> “Lars Falls in Love” happens as per canon. Yeah. Those are right on top of each other. IT’S OKAY, IT’S FINE, AGATHA IS POLYAMOROUS IN MY HEADCANON IT’S FINE.
> 
> In mythology, Zagreus is either another name for Dionysus (Greek god of partying, cha cha cha!), or his own entity. In either case the story goes that a goddess took offense at his existence and tried to assassinate him in infancy (and succeeded: the common trait of stories including this name is Zagreus being torn to pieces), but his father absconded with him and restored him to life.


	3. In the Storm's Keep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keeping up with the Sturmvorauses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anevke is pronounced nearly identically to Anevka except you aspirate the last syllable. (Start to say it but then change your mind before you hit the vowel.)

“No,” says Aaronev Anevke Sturmvoraus, who is the fourteenth Aaronev in his line and so goes almost exclusively by his middle name. “Father. I don’t think so.” And he spins around and stabs Aaronev Wilhem with a lab implement. He digs it deep, and dark blood pools around the entry wound.

Tarveka’s rigid metal face is, as always, frozen in an expression that's deliberately widely interpretable, but seems to be trying to twist itself into shock. She was always more sentimental than him. With the electric pads in her hands, she could have done that easily, at any time. But she never would have. She was going to try to keep working _with_ him, even after he’d destroyed her in his machine. She tries to be pragmatic, but she always gets overinvested in her cons, and can’t judge when it’s time to discard them.

Tarveka’s spark always ran strong, probably as strong as Anevke’s, and he suspects that’s why, in the end, Father just could resist trying her out. It would have used up someone else, but there was more to his dear little sister than that.

Anevke kept his sister going, though he’s always been better at taking people _apart._ Anevke has always relished the messy, biological aspects of science — He’s like their father that way.

Once she was mostly functioning, but before she was twisted beyond recognition, Tarveka declared his craftsmanship dissatisfactory, and shunted herself into a clank.

Anevke doesn’t think this is what she _meant_ to do with the full-body prosthetic she built herself, a deep fugue steadying her faltering hands. But his little sister didn’t conceal her disturbed reaction well enough when her body shut down but she remained. She doesn’t know that he knows. He wonders what she keeps in that palanquin. Weights? One of her own dress mannequins?

An uncharitable part of Anevke thinks that Tarveka’s objections to his increasing twisting of her body was neither vanity nor horror, but despair that she couldn’t wear her own dress designs anymore. The clank body is the perfect dress mannequin, with a neat line to the slope of its shoulders which makes everything hang perfectly.

If only she hadn’t taken the thing’s construction entirely out of his hands. He’d have added safeties. Tarveka was always dangerous.

Anevke supposes he could have just let her be, and maybe scraped up a little power from her death if their father’s delayed attack of guilt rendered him useless enough. But Anevke likes to keep the variables dancing, and he values Tarveka as one of those variables. Her proneness to sentiment means he can trust her, even though it isn’t mutual. He doesn’t want to discard such a reliable piece before he has to. At the right moment.

The opportunity to command the Other’s servants with his sister as a go-between was unexpected, but it’s perfect, really. Elegant. This way, if he can see the conspiracy through and take the title of Storm King, it will be an incorporation of the Order’s newer dalliances into their original purpose. And if he can’t, or the bulk of the powers in motion betray him, they’ll have to concede Europa to him anyway, out of grace, as he’ll have it in the palm of his hand already.

He puts his hand on Tarveka’s arm, for show, although with the girl drugged to insensibility there’s no one left to play a show _to._ She hums slightly, under his hand, all throughout the mechanism, running a little hotter than body temperature. He would have expected the doll body to be still, and icy, but the clank that contains Tarveka works ferociously. Mechanics were never his thing.

 

“‘Veka, _dear_ ie,” says Lucrezia, leaning over and putting her hand on the back of Tarveka’s engraved metal neck. “Do you think you could build me a _cunning_ little body like this? Maybe with a better face?”

Tarveka is immensely relieved that Lucrezia apparently wants to discard Agatha’s body as a vessel. Maybe there will be something of the other girl left to recover.

The power play is obvious in the pose chosen by her father’s goddess, but more’s the pity for her mind games, since even if Tarveka could get the heebie-jeebies from the proximity, it wouldn’t show on her _inferiorly designed face_.

But anyway, that probably means it’s time to get on with the next stage.

 

Anevke waves his cutlass at where the thick tubes leading from the puppet clank trail off into empty space. His appearance is still artfully put together. Agatha’s body lies prone on the ground. “Don’t you _see?_ ” he says. “I _know_ that you’re not even _human_ anymore! So stop _pretending!_ ” He turns away from the thing that he believes is not quite his sister to the not-girl on the floor.

Tarveka raises her pistol in a smooth motion. Bits of her charred sleeves crumble and fall to the ground. “I may not be human, but it’s you, I think, who is the bigger monster, Anevke.” She shoots.

“• _Put him somewhere safe and then report back to me,_ •” she commands her attendants. When they return, she’ll get all their information and then order them to forget. For now, she gets to work.

 

Tarveka was expecting dismissiveness, at best, from Agatha when she learned Tarveka isn’t a real girl. The reaction she actually gets is rather…different.

“It really is a marvel of engineering,” breathes Agatha. The air is thrumming with the music from her little clanks as Agatha gazes into her eyes. Er, that is, _examines the improvements to her chassis._

“I’d love to really examine you later,” says Agatha, biting her lip.

_Agatha wants to examine her._

(Tarveka doesn’t have breath to catch, and yet.)

It’s been a while since she had facial expressions to school. She hopes it isn’t too noticeable.

“I ah, think I would be amenable to that,” she says. “…Lady Heterodyne.”

 

It’s an illusion, but Tarveka is surprised Agatha isn’t intimidated by the feeling that she’s the only thing of flesh and blood in a castle with several hundred little clanks, two Muses, Tarveka, and a possessing ghost.

(Tarveka does not count herself as another ghost. Probably.)


	4. Outside the Keep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Immediately_ after [no bless obli cheese](http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20051123).

The Jägers they found in Zumzum (which had these a _ma_ zing fried cream things, which earns it points in Zag's book despite the fiasco) are _definitely_ going to go after Agatha, so Zag jumps them before they’ve even started conferring. He knows how Jägermonsters operate pretty well from working with the ones crashing with the Empire, and once they decide to plot, the turnover rate from plan to action is functionally nonexistent. He sneaks up where they’re listening in from a wagon roof like creepy gargoyles and leans over the silent trio. “You’re going to get her, yeah?” he says. “Take me with you.”

 

They all jump (Zag is just that good), then exchange looks. “He iz hendy,” says Oggie finally.

“He iz Miz Agatha’s friend,” says Maxim.”

“Yah, you iz coming, keedo,” says Dimo.

“Ve couldn’t schtopp you enny vay, yah?” says Maxim, grin fierce.

“Come on den,” says Oggie cheerfully. “Toot-sveetie!”

“Nobbles and wobbly cheese, _hon_ estly,” Dimo mutters to himself for some reason.

 

Circling the castle doesn’t tell them anything good. Zag scouts around and then shares the rundown of what people are saying, and what they _aren’t_ , and how no news is bad news.

“And I’ve heard things around,” he adds, nodding up at the Keep of Storms. “About that place. Things I do _not_ like.”

“Hyu mean like, in repports from somevere, mebbe?” says Ognian, trying for sly.

“Yes, alright, I get news from damn reports to my father,” says Zag. If they’re asking leading questions, they already know. They smirk at him sharply, but it seems approving. “That doesn’t _matter_ right now. Right now we have to get her out of there. And that means we have to get _in_ there.”

“Hm,” hums Dimo, looking through the arcs of lightning barring the way to the keep. “Hyu know, ven she was out-like, the other day, Miz Agatha met op with a pretty gorl — hoo, she looked like she could rilleh fight! — mit a _verreh_ pretty little airship.”

“No, Hy dun tink dat vould be enny good,” says Oggie.

“Dot ting, hit looked pretty small, yah?” adds Maxim. “How many pipple you figure it fit?”

“Hy dunno, brodder,” adds Oggie, doing a show of looking Maxim up and down speculatively, “mebbe if ve start cotting bits off uf hyu —”

“Hoy dere!”

“ _She_ could get in, though,” Dimo reasons, demonstrating seasoned experience ignoring tomfoolery. “Hy think ve should be tellink her habout dis, before ve go in. Hyu know, in case she vants to help Miz Agatha, like.”

Zag stares up at the sky above the castle. “Hm. I think they would still notice a dirigible, even a small one. It’s dark out, and the lightning moat is going to kill visibility a bit, but this is a town square. It’s not _that_ dark.”

“Iz not a dir-rigy-bill, zo much,” says Oggie.

“Hyu’s be growink op in de sky, yah?” says Maxim. “Mebbe hyu will _like_ it.”

 

“They _have_ Agatha?!” says Gil, looking overwrought, and Zag thinks, _Hmm_ , to himself, quietly. His friend should have options, is all. _Lots_ of options. Lars is a real sweetheart, and the wild woman Agatha apparently found in the Wastelands does _not_ look like a sweetheart, but she’s a _spark_ , and Agatha is going to need someone who can keep up with her….

Zag regards Agatha’s _friend_ (hee) as she waves her hands and explains that her flying machine definitely would not get off the ground carrying five people and a lobster. “But I could make _modifications_ ,” she says, staring at it speculatively like she’s considering ripping it apart then and there. She was patting it earlier, so it’s kind of unsettlingly like watching someone turn that look on a baby. Sparks, amirite. Sparks in ~love~, possibly. Zag is _assessing._

“See, the vertical blades spin to get it off the ground straight up, and then I basically _drop_ it and then it stays airborne.”

“Iz dot…safe?” Oggie asks, goggling.

“So!” Zag cuts in before Gil can find some acceptable-to-her way to say, _Well, no._ “I’m glad you’re going to help us help Agatha! Apropos of nothing, how do they feel where you’re from about having three or more people in a relationship? Good? I’m asking for a friend.”

Gil drops the wrench she was gesturing with on her foot.

“You don’t have to answer!” Zag calls back to her when they finally take their leave. “Just think about it!”

 

“Huh,” Gil says to Zoing after the odd party of Agatha’s friends starts back the way they came, getting into some sort of scuffle that involves a lot of gentle elbow-checking, as she starts to prep her ship. “I didn’t think you got that hair color around here.” She looks at the Jägers. “Uh, in humans.”

"Mitu."

"So Miss Clay has Jägermonsters pulling for her. Interesting."

"Wattagirl!"

"Tell me about it. If my hunch is right, Agatha was on Castle Wulfenbach recently, which could explain it.... But there wasn't a Wulfenbach sigil to be seen on those three, did you notice?" She flips her wrench around on her hand a few times and then sends it spinning forward so it lands in her toolbox.

"Moarbeetu frozn? Makeep. Skamor!"

"Yes, Zoing. More humans should come in orange."

 

The way back is a trudge, but Dimo seems pleased with the results of their detour. “She iz definitely good beckup for Miz Agatha to keep hendy,” he says. “En mebbe also she be wanting her for some _odder_ tings.”

Oggie leans over into the green Jäger’s personal space. “Hyu tink she can help her vit dot vagon she kept svearing at de odder day?”

“Dot vos some spicy language, dot vas,” muses Maxim. “Vere hyu tink she learn dot?”

Dimo shoves at them both. “Hy am _sayink_ —” He breaks off into a gusty sigh. “Zott, hyu are so dense.”

“Hy am not dense!” says Oggie, dramatically offended. “Hy am very schooled in matterz of luff! See? Hy even knew vat hyu vas tokking about. Hend you thot hyu vas beink _schneaky_. Heh.”

Dimo rolls his eyes. “Yez, yez, hyu heff shown me op. Woe, woe.”

“Not that I don’t appreciate the free entertainment,” says Zag (the Jägers shrug, sheepish at being caught at it), “but when did you three _see_ that ship, anyway? She was explaining it to you like she’d never met you before.”

Dimo rubs the back of his neck. “Oh, hyu know.”

“Ve vas in de neighborhood,” says Maxim, eyes on the sky.

“Hy vas not op to ennything!” Oggie insists, distressed. “Honest!”

“…So you were following Agatha,” says Zag.

Maxim shifts, uncomfortable. “Vell…mebbe.”

Zag meditates on this, then reasons that the wild Jägers are pretty good guys and are also turning out to be surprisingly adorable about the Jägerkin's real master. They were spying on Agatha on her _dates_. “Take me next time,” he settles on.

“Ey, vusn’t very interestink,” says Oggie, trace readings of shame gone. “Dey mostly tokked science schtuff.”

“Dot type, dey tink de interestink part _iz_ de science schtuff.”

Everyone present groans.

 

When the assembling rescue party gets _back_ to the middle of Sturmhalten, _again_ , they _practically_ miss Lars. Also again, apparently.

“Been following you,” he says, breathing hard. “You keep moving around.”

Yeah, Zag can’t imagine an actor, capable point man or no, moving as quickly as three Jägermonsters and _him_ , especially since he seems to have acquired a furry legwarmer, hooked into his leg for dear life. “You brought Krosp.”

Lars shrugs, a stage gesture. “He wanted to come!” Then he grimaces with his whole body when Krosp responds by flexing his claws. _Also_ a stage gesture. Zag loves the Circus people, he honestly does. He thinks he could be at home in their “the world is a stage, so why not mug for the audience” mindset.

“So if you grabbed the Jägers because you knew they would come after Agatha,” says Lars, shaking out his cat-burdened leg (no joy) “— Uh, _how_ did you know that?”

_They’re Jägers, and she’s the Heterodyne._ “They seemed to like her!” Zag says. He grins (leers, he leers) and nudges Lars with a playful elbow. “ _You_ like ‘er too, don’tcha?”

“ _I — !”_

Tormenting Lars is a _delight._ Zag hasn’t known him very long, but he’s certain the guy isn’t normally this easy to fluster. Except about matters of life and death, which, whatever Agatha obviously privately thinks, is perfectly reasonable.

Krosp groans. (Krosp trying to make traditionally low human noises _always_ sounds adorable, and this is no exception.) “I thought catching up with all of you might be better than being stuck alone with _this_ genius, but I was _wrong._ ”

Zag looks down at him. “…You’re gonna have to tell me what happened on your way here sometime, buddy.”

Lars and Krosp exchange a look of mutual, recent horror. Which is just the look of a half-decent story, so no regrets.

“ _Sewers_ ,” Krosp whispers to himself quietly, his expression haunted.

 

The Baron is framed by a brightly colored circus wagon, and it only makes him look more menacingly enormous. His swathe of silver hair is a chin-length version of Zag’s fluff, without the two strands that frame his son’s face like thick ribbons. His gaze is riveted on Agatha and Zag, cutting out the rest of their crowd of allies. The Jägers finger their weapons; Lars looks like he’s on the edge of panic; Gil landed on the field nearby earlier but hasn’t approached. Krosp’s flicking tail detracts from the severity of his expression, and the Sturmhalten Sewer Rats look like they’re only still on the scene because bolting just then would make them the only moving things around, and if they were that dumb they wouldn’t have lived to be Sturmhalten Sewer Rats. To a one, they all stand around awkwardly. Gil hovers awkwardly to the side, and everyone else hovers awkwardly in the center. It’s not a brave day for rescue parties. The Baron’s speech to Agatha swallows up impetus for action.

“My son trusts you,” the Baron says meaningfully. His eyes cut back and forth between the swordsman and Agatha at this point, but Zag has always responded to Klaus’ allusions toward his romantic prospects by upping the ante and making the conversation as awkward and graphic as possible, so by this point Klaus is too subtly well-trained to ask about his motivations in running off with Lucrezia’s daughter. “If you both come back —”

Zag shakes out his shoulders, tense. “…You talk like it’s a given that _I’m_ coming back with you, father.”

“ _Oh,_ no,” says Klaus. “The Lady Heterodyne, should she agree to discuss terms, has her own responsibilities, but _you_ will return. It’s time we had a _long talk,_ young man.” The Baron looms forward, expression forbidding, and wraps his massive hand around Zag’s wrist.

And then chokes on something.

Agatha springs into action before anyone can blink. “Why are you all standing around?!” she shouts. “He’s _choking!_ Let me through, I can _help_ him!” The footsoldiers confer frantically and okay her, and she darts in.

“I’ll help, I’ve got medical experience!” says Gil, leaping forward.

“Oh, great!” chirps Agatha. Turning, she elbows Gil in the nose. “Oh, sorry! Here, I’ll just deal with it,” she says as the princess reels away, clutching her face.

She kneels to the ground, pressing a hand to Klaus’ chest.

“Stay back!” shouts Agatha. “He’s, uh, fructivorous!”

“Wot’s dot mean?” Oggie asks Gil, leaning over to consult her.

“Fzzrk,” says Gil, hands covering her face and possibly trying to set her own nose. Her inarticulate response has a whistle in it.

Then the tide of the entire negotiation flips over in a breath, and _everyone_ is moving.

 

The field is a storm of motion with Lars and Agatha forming its eye. The Jägers have leapt into the fight; the sewer rats have vanished. Gil, her nose purpling, is bent over her ship ranting, and appears to be trying to refit it to use as an impromptu crowd disperser.

Klaus has given up on subtlety and negotiation, grabbing for his son. “You cannot stay with her!” he shouts at Zag, who grimaces and barely dodges. “You do not understand how dangerous — !”

“Hey!” says Gil, abandoning her ship and lunging forward with something she grabs from its backseat gripped in her right hand — it looks like a big fork with electricity dancing on the end — and one of her swords fisted in her left. “Get away from him!”

“Do _NOT_ interrupt — !” starts the Baron, only half-turning from Zag. Gil darts into the space Zag has put between the two Wulfenbachs, fork thing aimed at the Baron’s torso, sword up to defend. Klaus raises his sword arm, his greatsword dripping crimson, then hesitates, eyes snagging on Gil’s snarling brass circlet, then darting to the bifurcated blade of her katar. His complexion turns from a red fury to an only arguably better putty color. “ _You_ — Djorok’ku Skifandias _von?!_ ”

Gil looks like she’s been smacked. “What — S’vek? Zur bakken Skiff?!”

“Kar!” The Baron presses a hand to his chest, greatsword mostly forgotten. “Mor bakken Skiff!”

“Morbokn skif vok!” says the blue coat by the Baron’s leg, which really puts a cap on Klaus’ day.

“What —” he begins, and then is interrupted when the entire battlefield is overtaken by an upset like someone has picked it up and shaken it. The Baron and the Skifandrian dodge debris in opposite directions.

 

The debacle with the chicken house and assorted other circus wagons ends with the Baron’s son, the Heterodyne Girl, and the mysterious foreign spark all unaccounted for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gil: What — What? You speak Skiff?!  
> Klaus: Yes, I speak Skiff!  
> Zoing: I speak Skiff too!  
> Klaus: Augh what the shit
> 
> I do not feel bad about adding more pointless doubling back to the Rescue AT ALL, because the Rescue Party mostly runs in ineffective circles and facilitates a lot of really great comedy.
> 
> Lars’ arc is not significantly impacted by this AU. Unfortunately? I tried to scootch events surrounding “Showtime!” around to save him, but it didn’t work out.
> 
> Why did I arrange things so I would have to make up Skiff and then render it in Zoingspeak. @ me: What is this, why would you do this to yourself.
> 
> When asked in an AMA whether all Skifandrians had green hair, Kaja said yes and Phil said no. For the purposes of this AU, the answer is no.


	5. A Great Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story summary lies for brevity: Tweedle and Seffie are also swapped.

“I see,” says Anevke, when his sister shoots him in the back. He’s surprised. Not because she’s decided her best course of action is to shoot him — because Tarveka _knows_ that gun pulls to the right, and yet she didn’t aim to the left.

He’s still surprised when he wakes to blurry half-consciousness in the Great Hospital.

 

“You think she spared you?” says Violetta, perched at the foot of his hospice bed like a purple bird, making a nonchalant show of trimming her nails with a pocket knife. “Tcha! Your sister’s a snake. An _incompetent_ snake. She probably just forgot, the prissy prima donna. Like she shouldn’t know how to assess a _gun_ barrel by now, _hon_ estly….” She descends into irritated muttering, but remains apparently undistracted from her show of _being_ dangerous while _looking_ distracted. She’s waiting for his order. Well, she can just wait another minute, because trying to hold onto a single thought is like trying to keep track of a single fish in an ornamental pond. What to do, what to do. The Baron’s forces are occupying the town, and he’s lost his key to controlling the citizens _anyway_. His ancestral keep might have been exploded. And mere days after he inherited it, no less. If it weren’t for Vado the Unfortunate, that would probably be a record. He’s vulnerable right now, and the members of his family who support Seffie’s candidacy are no doubt eager to storm in. He’ll have to make himself seem useful to them if he wants that to slack off. Currently, Violetta is his only available resource. He’s surprised to see her. He thought she’d been restationed far away…

…In Mechanicsburg. He’s in Mechanicsburg. Why is he in Mechanicsburg?

 _Why am I in Mechanicsburg?_ he tries to say. What comes out is: “Your hair is very _red._ It’s your plumage.”

Violetta stares at him like he’s insane. He has no idea if that was intelligible. He faintly hopes not. “Ho, boy,” she says, and reaches into one of her pockets for a green vial.

 

The real kicker, Anevke reflects bitterly when his thoughts are more in order, is that his scheme was going so smoothly at the start of the whole debacle. Before it evolved the way it ultimately did, damn the Weißdamen for never forgetting their original loyalties. There was a simple, brutal beauty to their plan with the wasps: It would have been a neat marriage of the two oft competing purposes of the Knights of Jove. But then Anevke’s incorporation of Lucrezia’s technology had to be ruined by the return of the woman herself. Or worse, a dozen shadows of her. Where is her main brain? If he doesn’t know that, how is he supposed to kill it?

Violetta keeps tutting at him for trying to get all the information she has out of her _as_ they try to escape the Great Hospital without drawing attention, but they simply don’t have the luxury of _dawdling_.

“And my sister?” he asks, as they crouch behind a fern waiting for a guard to change shifts. Security isn’t normally this tight, he understands, but the Baron is receiving care here. Violetta has just summed up the rather depressing state of Sturmhalten — It won’t do any good to go back there, for now, and Tarveka, if she persists, has surely thought along the same lines. “Where is she?”

“Well, _technically_ I’m only supposed to keep an eye on _you_ ,” says Violetta. “But she _might_ have snuck into that death trap up on the hill to aid the true Heterodyne or whatever. Is that part of your plan?”

Violetta glances at him at that point, and her expression implies that she received enough of an answer to her question from _his_ expression.

“…And you didn’t feel inclined to _stop_ _her?_ ” Anevke manages eventually.

Violetta shrugs. “Gotta say this for the _princess_ —” Her tone makes it obvious “princess” is meant as an insult and not as a title. “— she’s a _lot_ harder to poison now.”

Anevke frowns, both eyes but only half his attention on the hallway. Tarveka has mostly been his ally, and is a clever strategist and politician. By the sound of it, she’s trying to throw it all away for love. Such a path doesn’t suit someone so naturally pessimistic, but Anevke imagines Tarveka knows that.

Suddenly he realizes something, and groans.

“What?” says Violetta, peering up and down at him skeptically like she’s checking if he’s started bleeding from any new areas.

Since raising his arms doesn’t hurt at that particular moment — which feels like a privilege, though less so every minute — he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Tarveka has run off with the Heterodyne Girl. She’s going to defend her with everything she has.” If the best plot to succeed required the girl’s death, could he take his sister’s latest little toy? When things are requested of Tarveka, she normally gives them up with a smile. But if she were to dig in her heels and really _try_ …

“Uhhh _huh_ ,” says Violetta, skeptical. Anevke can’t blame her; Tarveka’s effectiveness had blindsided him only days ago, and it landed him here. Still, the _other thing_ he’s realized, that is definitely something the Order’s worst Smoke Knight will appreciate.

“My sister has run off with the Heterodyne Girl,” he repeats again. He rolls his eyes. “My _fated bride._ ”

Startled, Violetta snorts.

The guard finally changes, and they dash down the hallway, and do an up-and-down, to be safe.

“So are you going to work with the Order’s pawn in town?” Violetta asks as they double back through a ward full of unconscious cyclopes. A sign propped in a barrel in the middle of the room between the two rows of beds says: “Do Not Wake”, with a double-sided arrow. Violetta treads directly on their beds, silently. “She should be trying to take the Castle by now, if she hasn’t been held up.”

“No,” he says. “We’ve had reports on how that infernal machine works. If a true member of the Heterodyne family is inside, it’s far too late to uproot her. Going along with the fake at this stage would be a foolish game of roulette. Anyone with half a brain should be able to see that. ...Though I have no doubt _someone_ will still appear to try to see the whole mess through to the finish, it is _not_ going to be me. No, Tarveka’s in the right about one thing: At this point the best thing is to try to curry the real girl’s favor. And don’t mistake me, she _is_ the real thing.” He startles at an errant tank of arms someone left soaking in brine in the middle of the walkway, and gingerly steps over it, careful not to brush against another arm shaped like a hairy ham that’s attached to one of the slumbering denizens of the hospital beds. “We could still use her if we got her on our side,” he says. “But I don’t imagine she’s feeling very charitable toward us as a body right now. Well, unless my _dear sister_ ’s seduction routine is working.”

“Uh,” says Violetta, “you’re not saying you want to go into the Castle, do you? Because you _are_ pretty easy to poison, and I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“God, no,” says Anevke. “There can _not_ be enough going on in there to make _that_ worth it.”

Violette puffs a relieved exhale.

They vacate the cyclops ward, pounding down another hallway on silent feet.

“I highly doubt the girl would be pleased to see me,” continues Anevke, swiveling his head around looking for Hospital staff and patients. “At this point, the best thing is to respect that, and avoid the chit. Let Tarveka soften her up, she’s good at that.” Although he would regret not having access to Tarveka’s modified voice. Honestly, leaving the Heterodyne Girl alive and Tarveka _with_ her? It was redundant. But the Sturmvoraus siblings often ran up against points of contention like this. Tarveka and Anevke were both prone to bouts of irrationality, but often strongly disagreed on what was worth being irrational _about._

Violetta effortlessly detaches the cover to a vent on the wall that should lead outside and swings into it, reaching down to help him up. “And when someone from our family tries to kill you?” she says, yanking him up with both hands. “I mean…” she says, looking at his bandaged, bed sheet-clad state and reconsidering. “When someone _else_ from our family tries to kill you, again.”

“I’m certain I can convince _some_ of them to stay backing me,” mutters Anevke, starting to inch down the vent. Violetta impatiently inches after him. “It’s not like the other candidates are particularly exemplary. …And I’m far and away the most mature option, if nothing else.”

“Tweedle is older than you.”

“By a _month_. And our dear Cousin Tweedle is a twit.”

“I _definitely_ never said she was not a twit. I wouldn’t say that knocked silly on hallucinogens.”

“Fair enough,” he grants. “Anyway, who cares how old Tweedle is? You’re just being pedantic.”

Violetta snorts again. “She’s not ‘ _a candidate_ ’,” — she pauses crawling to make finger quotes — “but people who don’t know that Seffie is the smart one think she can watch him or something. So you’re going to have to stop discounting the kiddo and assuming people won’t want him over you.”

“Doesn’t the current plan involve constructing a ‘ _grand romance_ ’?” Anevke demands, voice bleeding distaste. “Xerxsephnius is, like, _fifteen_. Doesn’t the Order expect people to have any _standards?_ ”

“He’s not —” Violetta sniffs. “Well, it doesn’t matter, because no, they don’t,” she says.

“…Fair enough,” Anevke says again, sighing. They leave through the other side of the vent, leaping from it onto the eaves of a neighboring roof. Anevke pauses before unfolding from his landing crouch to assess his physical state, but he actually feels fine. Press onward, then.

“Soooo,” says Violetta. “We’re out. Where to now, Highness?”

“ _Not_ Castle Heterodyne, that’s for sure,” says Anevke, brushing himself off and extricating an overly personable mimmoth from where it hitched a ride in the folds of his hospital gown. “You don’t have to worry about _that_.”

He was practically _inviting_ eventually ending up there, really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ProfessorESP](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorESP/pseuds/ProfessorESP) sketched Zengil and Zagreus and a scene from chapter 3! [Link](http://brawltogethernow.tumblr.com/post/164833417731/professorsparklepants-i-reread-tanoraquis-storm) (includes all my tagflailing)


	6. Heroes In Transit

Agatha and the Circus and the Jägers are all left cooling their heels on the stolen airship, which provides extra time to fret about everything. Agatha is still fairly worried about what happened to the Sturmvoraus siblings, mostly for Tarveka’s sake on the sister’s part and for that of her own security on the brother’s. At some point in all the missing time, Anevke seemed to vanish as a player. And Agatha was with Tarveka, furious with her and terrified, then blacked out, and then came to again with her nominal ally from the castle nowhere in sight. She didn’t see the princess again before they had to beat a hasty escape. Agatha hopes she’s alright somewhere and not dead or dismantled, even if her motivations were deeply suspect.

The sudden cessation of action, in general, leaves no one quite sure what to do with themselves.

“Well, that’s dumb,” says Zag, when Agatha expresses this feeling to him after she’s woken up and killed an hour on uninspired fiddling with her little clanks. “We’ve got _barely_ just enough time to plan what we’re going to do when we get into town. We can’t expect that things won’t pick up quickly once we do. They’ll be keeping my father in the same place you’re going, for one thing. The Great Hospital of Mechanicsburg is famous, and the head medic is my father’s personal friend.” At Agatha’s frazzled, dizzy look, he appears to take a little pity. “But, hey, you haven’t even had your coffee yet. …And there’s someone who hitched a ride who you haven’t even talked to yet.”

“…I don’t drink coffee,” says Agatha.

“Dear god, _why?_ ”

“ _Who are you talking about?_ ”

Zag raises his eyebrows.

Zag waggles his eyebrows.

Zag cocks his head across the gondola.

Agatha turns to see what he’s nodding at.

It only takes her a second to pick out a mop of light brown hair among the otherwise familiar lineup, apparently drawn into animated conversation with a knot of circus members.

Agatha gasps. “Gil!”

Zag smirks at her. “So are you gonna go talk to her?”

“No! Yes! Maybe? Oh, I don’t know, Zag, I mean. Maybe I should just stay over here?”

“Ooooo-kay,” says Zag, and begins to gently shove her toward the knot of conversation the Wasteland spark is involved in until Agatha smacks him away and chooses walking over being slowly skidded there.

“Can you act?” Rivet is saying to Zengil. “Because you look like you would make a _great_ High Priestess.”

“…I’m sorry?” says Gil. Due to interplay of genre conventions, the stock role of the High Priestess, the mysterious foreign spark who exists in some form in most Heterodyne plays to give Barry Heterodyne a love interest, does not bleed over much from the plays to the novels.

“Well, since we’re about to lose Miss Clay, Pix won’t be able to take that role as much, and — Oh! Speak of the devil!”

Caught lurking, Agatha jumps in place.

Gil turns to her, and gets that look like the sun’s come up again. She. She really needs to stop doing that. Agatha swallows.

“Um,” says Gil.

“I,” says Agatha.

Gil looks up. Agatha looks down.

“Blue fire, I can’t take this,” says Zag, failing at what looks like a personal challenge to stay a respectful distance away. He glares at Agatha as he turns his bystander-maneuvering powers on guiding the rest of the (very interested) group a few feet away.

Agatha pointedly ignores all of this. She clears her throat. “What — what are you doing here? Not that I’m not, um, glad to see you, but — what are you doing here?”

“Oh, um. My flyer kind of got. Destroyed? In the big fight.”

That’s _her fault._ Her destruction, her fault Gil was there at all.

“Oh my gosh, Gil, I’m so _sorry!_ ” she says. “You worked so hard, and…”

“Hey, no, it’s okay! Seriously, it’s fine. Anyway, I have so many new ideas now, I’d have had to start over from scratch to implement all the new principles I’ve thought of _anyway_ ….”

Agatha licks her lips. “What kind of new principles?” She finally stops fidgeting and looking at her shoes and looks Gil properly in the eye. And immediately jerks back. “Agh! What happened to your _face?_ ”

“Uhh,” says Gil.

“Wow, you really don’t remember,” drifts a voice from the “separate” knot of theater people.

“Quiet, rabble,” says Zag.

 

Under the burning curiosity of an entire circus, Agatha gently takes Zengil by the arm and — okay, she tows her after her with an iron grip until she finds a door, wrenches it open, and throws Gil through it and then herself in after, slamming the door behind them.

It’s a closet. A small, cluttered closet. Not, say, an empty meeting room. Oh well, it’s too late, she may as well barrel ahead and make it look like she picked a closet on purpose.

Agatha begins babbling, like if she gets out as many words as possible as fast as possible she can make up for all the words that went unsaid when she should have said them. “Listen, I know —” she says, “I know it must be weird to find out I’m a Heterodyne and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you and I swear I wasn’t teasing when we talked about the books and really it’s not that I don’t trust you I just wasn’t telling anybody and then I didn’t know what you would say and…”

She realizes she isn’t leaving Gil any opportunities to respond.

“And, uh, yeah,” she finishes, faltering. Deflating, she slumps back against the wall — then springs forward when a broom handle jabs her in the spine.

“Oh, that,” says Gil.

 _Oh that._ “ _What._ ”

Gil averts her gaze. “Ah, by the big fight, I kind of… already knew?”

Agatha gestures agitatedly, donks her funny bone on a shelf for her trouble. “WHAT?”

“I mean, I didn’t _know._ I guessed?” She averts her gaze even harder, turning her head to look in fascination at a shelf stacked with rusted tins of sealant.

“ _How?_ ” demands Agatha, with less gesturing this time.

“It was — Well, it wasn’t _obvious,_ but it was all there to be put together? Your Jägers, your destination… And you’d met the Baron.”

“Lots of people meet the Baron!”

“And you wanted to _hide_ having met the Baron.” Gil actually wags a finger and does a smarmy grin.

“And yeah,” Gil continues, “of course lots of people meet the Baron, he rules the continent by traveling all over it. But the weird thing is, even though people call him a tyrant, as far as I’ve figured out only fairly narrow categories of people actually _dislike_ him.” She quirks a half-smile at Agatha. “And you don’t seem like a poor ruler, a homicidally careless spark, or someone with ambitions of world domination.”

“I could aspire to world domination,” mutters Agatha quietly, hunching up her shoulders and crossing her arms and twisting her torso a quarter turn away to pout at a mop.

Gil has the audacity to _snicker_ at her.

Agatha ducks her head to pout at the cheek of it all and then glares up at Gil through her hair.

Gil waves a hand back and forth placatingly, knocks a small tin off a shelf, catches it, and replaces it where it was. “I understand why you didn’t tell me,” she says. “I don’t mind. Honestly, it’s nice to know for sure _why_ you’d fled Castle Wulfenbach.” Her eyes dance. “You were pretty mysterious, Miss Clay.”

“I never said I _was_ on the run from Castle Wulfenbach,” Agatha points out, perplexed and a little concerned about how she gave this away.

Gil makes a face. “No-o, but,” she says.

“ _But?_ ” prompts Agatha.

Gil waves her hands around, but this time very, very slightly. “…You were so obvious about wanting to hide that you’d been there at all that you might as well have. Next time you want to hide something, maybe think about it less instead of focusing on concealing it?

Agatha mulls this over. “That both does and doesn’t make sense.”

“Eh, I was raised in politics,” says Gil with a microshrug. “If you’re going to try to take your town, you’ll get used to it.”

Agatha tilts her head up to make a face at her, and realizes that, ever since she was propelled forward by the treacherous broom, they’ve been standing really very close. She furiously tries to tell herself that neither of them was minding this ten seconds ago, but she can feel that she’s started blushing anyway. This confuses Gil, who blinks at her, then — woes — visibly notices what Agatha has noticed, and then _she’s_ blushing, her face freezing into a spectacular expression of _oh my god what now_.

And the answer to that question is in the charged air between them, as evident as a mathematical proof. Almost unconsciously, Agatha leans in.

Gil tips forward.

— Causing a chain reaction that ends with a bucket half-full with some sort of cleaning solution emptying on both of their heads, dousing the both of them with liquid that smells like lemons and lye.

Gil slowly raises the bucket on her head up just enough to peer at Agatha with one eye.

There’s a second, completely different, pause.

Then as one they fall into a giggling fit.

“…I need a bath,” declares Agatha, gasping. This makes Gil whoop even harder.

Even as she chokes through the last few waves of giggles, Agatha looks up at Gil consideringly, thinking about…the moment from a moment ago. Wondering if she should chase its like later. She’s…fairly certain she _could_.

But, not now. Agatha already tried putting off what she needs to do and that — that ended badly, and not for her. She needs to focus.

As Agatha’s resolve firms, Gil has mostly recovered. She smiles at Agatha again and then gestures at the door in a silent ‘After you?’ gesture. It looks silly with her keeping her elbows tucked in flush to her torso and performing the mini-flourish entirely with her upper arms.

Covering her own snicker with her hand, Agatha reaches out to grab the handle and shove the door open.

Instead the handle turns, but there’s a flat thud and a rattle and the muffled sound of someone going “Oof!” as the door stops on something Agatha’s weak push can’t move out of the way.

Agatha narrows her eyes, then locks gazes with Gil.

Agatha plants a foot and kicks the door by the handle where Zagreus taught her to as Gil shoves her shoulder against it. It slams open and sends no fewer than six eavesdroppers flying.

“ _Really?_ ” demands Agatha to the small crowd they’ve knocked over like bowling pins.

“Oh, don’t grind your gears,” says Pix, picking herself up off the ground where she was knocked from a crouch and brushing off her skirts. “We couldn’t hear what you were saying anyway.”

“This blasted contraption, it does not work!” declaims Dame Ædith in a hiss, shaking a series of tubes and horns that might be for amplifying sound in a tightly clenched fist.

Agatha sighs.

“You too, Zoing?” says Gil, voice suffused with betrayed melancholy.

The little lobster monster, who is wiggling out from under Embi’s coat, blinks up at its creator innocently.

 

Zag sidles over after Agatha storms away from the circus folk, forgetting that she no longer needs to drag Gil along after her by the arm. (Zoing hops after them, apparently presuming an invitation.) “So I trust you two crazy kids are okay after my protégé’s little bombshell?” he fishes.

“Right,” says Gil.

“You’d guessed already, hadn’cha.”

“I mean, it makes sense.”

“Obvyus!” Zoing proclaims smugly.

Zag nods faux-sagely down at the teeny construct, looking immensely entertained, then pulls an actually grave face. “So now you know that,” he says. “You should probably also know that I’m Zagreus Wulfenbach.”

Gil blinks at him. “You’re the what now?”

Zag’s eyebrows furrow. “The Baron’s heir.”

Gil squints as she processes this, then her eyes widen comically. “…Baron _Wulfenbach?_ The baron has an _heir?!_ ”

“ _Seriously?_ ” demands Zag.

“She’s been living in the Wastelands,” supplies Agatha.

“I did _not_ live in the — !” Gil deflates, sighs. “Fine, fine, okay.”


	7. Welcome to Mechanicsburg (Be Sure to Try Our Cheese-Dipped Snails and Tell Your Friends Back Home About Them!)

When they get into Mechanicsburg at last, sneaking incognito-like, Zag is _de-light-ed_ at one of the people they happen to run into.

“Wooster!” he says, beaming. “What are you doing _here?_ ”

“I got _reassigned,_ ” says Wooster, looking alarmed. “After _you_ ran off. What are _you_ doing here?”

Ardsley Wooster and Zagreus Wulfenbach had had an understanding. Zag knew Wooster was a spy for Her Undying Majesty (the Queen is undying, long live the Queen), and Wooster knew Zag knew, because Zag told him, and instead of kicking him out Zag extracted payment for Wooster’s absent loyalties in the form of an endless stream of wink-wink nudge-nudge British jokes, and in exchange for not mentioning his cover had technically been blown, Wooster didn’t have to be in disgrace and could keep trying to do his job. Zag tried to moderate what information Wooster had access to, and Wooster tried to subtly get around that, and was also fairly certain that Zag knew he did this, and thought it was funny. It had, despite everything, been a surprisingly workable arrangement before Zag ran off with a girl.

Which, by the way. “If I may ask, sir…”

Zag beams at him. Delighted and evil. “Go for it, Mister Wooster.”

Think of the nation, Ardsley. “What _is_ your relationship with the Lady Heterodyne? Exactly.”

He braces himself for details. Zag is and always has been a details person.

Zag leers at him, even worse because Wooster knew he would. “Oh?” he says. “Why? Got some great aunts you want to gossip to about it? Maybe other, miscellaneous older women?” His eyes tip up into half moons.

“Hurrk.”

Zag shrugs. “Don’t worry, I can throw you this one. I’m teaching her how to fight.”

What. “Er, what?”

Zag starts counting off on his fingers .”And run all over the place, and dodge stuff, and I think some acrobatic maneuvers when we’ve worked on her wrist strength more.” He gestures around the town square. A large spider holding a piece of Swiss cheese speared on a knife dodges his fingertips. “Have you seen this place? She’s going to _need_ it.”

Wooster contemplates this strange new world order. “You are _instructing_ the Lady Heterodyne.”

“I’m teaching her tactics, too. Politics. Diplomacy.” He emphasizes “diplomacy” by smacking one of his daggers into his hand.

“…Oh, yes,” says Wooster. “Between you and the citizens of Mechanicsburg, I imagine she’ll be set.”

 

Klaus wakes up to all-over pain, admonishing insistence he not work, and a bodyguard he suspects was picked out as much to punish him as for her effectiveness. But talking through his plan of action is keeping him on track. Bangladesh DuPree is mostly nodding along and adding off-color comments, but her pointed disinterest in anything political or logistical actually make her an uncommonly safe sounding board. “…Vole should deal with the girl _and_ retrieve my son. It’s the best I can do for him.”

“Mm hmm, mm hmm,” says Bang, nodding diligently, hands busy twirling some of her knives. “But really,” she says, “I say good on the guy for sticking to his guns and fighting for what he wants. Being caged up on the Castle didn’t really suit him, did you think?”

Klaus sighs, and dismisses this. There isn’t time to keep Zag _happy_ when he’s trying to keep him _alive._ The issues of his son’s tendency to withdraw into himself and to appear in places he isn’t wanted and then vanish from settings where his presence _is_ called for like a morbid ghost can be dealt with _after_ his safety has been ensured.

And when Klaus gets him back, it’s probably time to tell him about his mother. “…And then there’s her _other_ companion. The girl with the unusual swords, and the circlet. _She_ —”

“Who, the madgirl from the lost city?” says Bang.

“… _What_ ,” says Klaus.

“Do you _want_ her for something?” asks Bang. “Well, good luck, pal. I’ve been trying to catch her since she _landed_ on this stupid continent, but she’s slippery.”

Klaus takes a moment to take this in and reach the inevitable conclusion.

“ _She’s_ the warrior who destroyed your fleets?!” he demands. “All of them?! **_Alone?!_** ” Klaus somehow imagined DuPree’s query and original reason for joining him as someone…larger. Maybe she’s usually better-equipped?

“That’s the madgirl!” chirps DuPree. “I’ve been after her for _aaaa_ -ges.”

Klaus peers at her. Maybe he’s not even really conscious right now. That would explain the surreal combination of events. But it hurts so much. That would be so unfair.

“Guess you were distracted when I was trying to kill her during the Circus thing, sir!” she says cheerfully. Bangladesh is always cheerful when talking about murder.

Klaus groans. “This isn’t good. If she _is_ here for my son, she’s _much_ more dangerous than I suspected.”

DuPree looks at him oddly. Why? “Why would she be here for _Zag?_ ” she asks. “She —”

A courier bursts through the door. “Herr Baron!” she shouts, panicky, then tosses off a salute and waits for his nod to speak. “You know the prince of Sturmhalten, sir?”

Wilhelm. No, his son, who Sun was looking after. “Yes?”

“He’s gone missing, sir.”

Klaus slams his palm into the bridge of his nose, reopening both of the stitches in his brow.

 

Wooster isn’t quite sure whether joining Miss Clay’s entourage counts as defecting from the Wulfenbach Empire if it’s because he’s following its prodigal son. Not that it _really_ matters. And Introducing himself as “Ardsley Wooster, Agent to the Queen” has a certain thrill to it, even _if_ , by definition, being able to do so means he’s failed his task. He hasn’t gotten to do it since certain discrete altercations in Paris.

The Lady Heterodyne’s party settles in amid the whirlwind of chaos Agatha is making of the coffee shop. Zagreus waves a stick of gingerbread he must have acquired at one of the vending stalls. “You know she still can’t do a handstand?” he says to Wooster, the continuation of an ongoing critical assessment. “She says it’s her hips, but _Zengil_ doesn’t have any problems. I just haven’t been testing the strength in her core enough.”

“And the young lady in question would be, ah.” The odd-looking one, with the weird hair and the fading but still plainly spectacular bruise and compression bandage. “…The foreign spark.” Without thinking, he adds, “Well, she isn’t as… As…” There is no acceptable way to end this thought. He almost makes an hourglass motion in the air, but _no._ “Uh.”

Wooster wishes he didn’t know exactly how he got signed up for these rundowns analyzing violence and women’s hips. Understanding his journey to this point really just makes it worse. He hopes he can get his hands on some coffee, so he can spike it.

“ _She’s_ the one whose relationship with Agatha you should be asking about,” says Zag ruminatively, ignoring Wooster’s abandoned point, which is uncharacteristically merciful. “Whoo-ee!” he continues. “It’s a good thing the Heterodynes have pretty much always done what they want. Because if the Fifty Families thought they had a say in this, ha! It’d be a show!”

“…Wait, what? _What?_ ”

Zag cheerfully pats him on the back. It would as good as confirm that one of his favorite pastimes is playing “Chopsticks” with Wooster’s blood pressure if Wooster hadn’t _already known that._

In the background, something else explodes.

“ _Huzzah!_ ” shout the cafégoers. There’s an assortment of whooping.

Under their booth, the talking cat and the lobster construct are engaged in a disagreement that’s escalated into a scuffle. The Baron’s heir gently nudges the violent whirlwind of child-sized coats away from Wooster’s legs and flashes sharp canines at him.

…It was far and away time to toss his cover, anyway. _Far_ more interesting things are happening here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No jaw wiring for Bang because A.) that seems to have been a prank orchestrated by Gil, who isn’t present, and even if it wasn’t his idea B.) her path through the Circus incident and its aftermath was completely different due to chasing Gil instead of Wooster.


	8. Tourist Traipse

The Von Mekkhans eye the party speculatively.

“So who’s the girl?” asks Van, sipping his coffee, looking like he’s hoping to draw the strength from it to shield him from the systematic destruction and reconstruction of his fool coffeeshop. “You know…” He waves his hand around his head to simulate wild hair.

“Some warrior princess from a far-off land,” answers his grandfather, his expression pointedly bored. Eh, she’s pretty part and parcel for a Heterodyne companion. Still, a person of interest.

Vanamonde absorbs this with as little fanfare as it deserves. Good boy. “And the boy?”

“Oh, _you_ know,” says Carson, twisting the tip of one fluffy muttonchop between his fingers. “Apparently he’s no one much at all, some circus performer from nowhere.” He eyes his grandson meaningfully, a _you’d better understand I’m implying something different from what I’m saying or I’ll call you a fool to your face in front of other people_ look.

The Baron’s son does _look_ like he’s just walked out of a circus, you have to give him that. His frankly _ridiculous_ hair is by itself nearly enough — if Klaus actually _didn’t_ build the boy in a lab somewhere, Carson has some serious questions about his heritage — but he’s paired it with an overembroidered peasant’s shirt, cheery green and gold with a plunging neckline. He wears a pair of daggers on his hips that Carson suspects he knows how to use better than the outfit they’re being worn as part of implies, in leather sheaths painted robin’s egg blue.

It’s a look that in no way expects the viewer to take its wearer seriously. And that most of all clues Carson in that young Wulfenbach might actually be dangerous.

A gear bounces off the wall by Vanamonde’s face and he hunches into his coffee even further. Silly boy.

 

After a rousing hour, they don’t calmly exit the Sausage Factory Café so much as flee for their lives, which detracts a few points from the excursion. Agatha is becoming used to doing this. Zag can’t even be convinced to drop his coffee, though Gil regretfully uses hers as a projectile weapon in the kerfuffle kicked up by Captain Vole’s attempt to kill and/or capture Agatha and capture (and/or kill?) Zag.

In the by-road they finally stop in, Agatha puts her hands on her green-skirted knees and breathes hard.

“Still not making you run enough,” mutters Zag, crossing his arms and looking down at her. He is completely unwinded.

Agatha springs upright, energy reserves replenished by fear. “I am _fit as a fiddle,_ ” she insists, fervent.

Zag smirks approvingly at her, showing off his sharp incisors, but the expression still looks like a hundred push-ups.

Carson Von catches up, breathing hard and looking ornery as hell but movements surprisingly sprightly, with Wooster trotting behind him.

“Good, you’re here,” says Agatha. “Let’s go _._ ”

“That was weird,” grumbles Krosp. “Didn’t think a Jäger _could_ turn on you like that.”

“Well, they’re loyal by choice; it’s not built in like with a lot of constructs,” says Agatha. “So there’s no reason he _shouldn’t_.” She scratches the side of her neck. “What do _you_ think —” She turns to look beside her.

There’s no one there.

“— Gil?”

 

Gil cases the street she had to dodge into to ditch the footsoldiers and the mini-mob, but her train of thought is interrupted by a tugging on her leg.

“Zoing, not now,” she says.

Zoing makes an unhappy shriek, then tops it off with indignant, mangled Skiff. “Sta _kee!_ ”

Gil’s head swivels to face her companion. “What do you _mean_ we’re lost?”

 

“Maybe she just _left,_ ” says Agatha, who’s insisted they get on with things but has still been intermittently wringing her hands since they lost track of Gil.

“Oh, like that girl would leave your side for anything,” says Zagreus. “Nooo, we’re probably going to need to track her down. I bet she’s in some sort of trouble. She seems like the type.”

Zag’s jocular reassurance replaces one concern with another, less personal but arguably much worse concern. Zag is good at that.

He adds, “Look, this _totally_ made you forget how tired all that running made you. I should arrange for your girlfriends to be kidnapped more often.”

“She’s not my — You think she’s been _kidnapped?!_ ”

“Ehe, did I say that?”

 

Gil jogs down the street, dodging a group of kids playing a clapping game. (“Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack / All dressed in black, black, black / Had silver spikes, spikes, spikes / All down her back, back, back.”) She stops at the mouth of an alley in the middle of another largely interchangeable street of odd shops so Zoing can catch up, and glowers at an inoffensive patch of brickwork underneath a sign painted straight onto the wall, chalky sage text on a flaking butter yellow field. (“YES Absinthe! NO mice! DEBATABLY chips.”)

Having been separated from Agatha and her allies is manageable. The situation in this town? Is _not_ manageable. Gil has been learning to read political situations since before she was old enough to hold a live blade, and while three years hasn’t been enough to learn the pulse and breath of Europa, she can see enough to know that she _does not like_ what’s brewing here. There’s something bigger than what’s obvious at play, and that’s almost never good. It’s _especially_ bad now, because what _is_ obvious is more than enough.

She’s almost gotten the threads of the situation to come into line. Small fry will be moving in since the Baron is weakened, but they’re a distraction. Was that intelligence leaked intentionally, or was the spread of rumor natural? She has no doubt that there’s a group that will be glad the rumors have spread, even if they didn’t need to orchestrate it. One that’s more organized than all the shrimp.

There’s going to be a power grab, but even with the Baron incapacitated, the Empire isn’t tenuous enough for that to seem viable to an actually informed force, so why…?

Do they know something she doesn’t, that the Baron —

(The fearsome man who killed that kid, and who’s _been to Skifander._ )

((The comedic side man in her favorite foreign novels.))

— doesn’t? Some kind of ace? No one knew about the stealth revenants, but that intelligence has gotten to the Empire now, and _surely_ they don’t comprise enough of Europe to turn the tide of a coup, not with warning. They’ll have swept for them in critical places already, so it’s too late to use the element of surprise to take the Empire like _that._

…If this group is _trying_ to take the whole Empire.

“What do they always say, Zoing?” she mutters. “‘Today, the town, tomorrow, the world’?”

“Thenneygo splat, rait?” Zoing peeps, eye swiveling up to Gil as the little construct is distracted from where she was trying to intimidate a pudgy mimmoth who must have gotten fresh with her.

“Usually that’s next, yeah,” says Gil. She sighs. “We should be so lucky.” It’s perfectly viable, in theory. Establish a small power base, then use it to press outward. It’s been done several notable times, after all. And failed thousands of unnotable times.

Gil pinches the bridge of her nose and immediately regrets it.

She leans against a brick wall as the pain-sunbursts dissipate from her vision. “Somebody besides Agatha is trying to take this town, Zoing,” she says. “So what are we going to _do_ about i — Sweet Ashtara, buddy, let it go!”

“Snee?” Zoing freezes, caught, what can be seen of her expression still innocent. The mimmoth looks at Gil pleadingly from where it’s now trapped in the brim of Zoing’s hat.

“It has done _nothing._ ”

“Satta keeee _bok_ mizn.”

“I already have one DuPree in my life.”

Zoing levels a deeply offended stare at her and then places the mimmoth on the ground with exaggerated gentleness. The instant it touches the ground — after a long, slow descent more fitting for a dangerously overfull teacup and a touchdown that would benefit an orb of spun sugar — it scampers back into the alley where Zoing found it.

“Oh, my, god,” says a woman’s voice from behind her shoulder. “Who are you? I need to know. You’re _funny._ ”

Gil turns her head. The voice belongs to a pale redhead in a green top with a bag of tools slung over each shoulder.

“More importantly,” says her companion, a man with a dark complexion in pince-nez and a greatcoat, hefting his own three overladen bags, “which Agatha might you be talking about? It’s just, I think we might have an acquaintance in common.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Did you just call Zoing “her”?** \- Zoing isn’t swapped per se. I’m proposing that baby Gil assigned a gender to their homemade friend arbitrarily despite knowing perfectly well how to determine the sex of a lobster. (Inspired by my adolescent forays into fishkeeping, wherein I utterly confused my parents' understanding of bettas. RIP, Scarlet the unwittingly enby fish, I miss you.)
> 
>  **“Mary Mack”?** \- Not actually an anachronism!
> 
> Since the last AO3 update [Prof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorESP/pseuds/ProfessorESP) put up [more NE sketches](http://brawltogethernow.tumblr.com/post/171674235666/professorsparklepants-i-found-three-sketches-of) and I'm dying. Since she referenced it (omg) I'll also link my own (currently spoilery) [Tarveka lineup](http://brawltogethernow.tumblr.com/post/162445705354/four-faces-and-several-outfits-worn-by-the).


End file.
